Michael took nine years to gather doc­u­ments to show his mother Veron­ica’s prop­erty pa­pers were forged and sold to de­vel­op­ers, who con­structed res­i­den­tial com­plexes. He learnt that the prop­erty, worth over Rs 250 crore, was en­croached upon in con­nivance with ad­di­tional and as­sis­tant mu­nic­i­pal com­mis­sion­ers, the town plan­ner, rev­enue and land record of­fi­cers.

In March-April, Pal­ghar po­lice woke up to ex­tor­tion of builders by RTI ac­tivists. Around 10 cases were filed in Va­sai. In April, Michael re­ceived a no­tice from Va­sai po­lice, al­leg­ing that he was us­ing RTI to threaten and ex­tort de­vel­op­ers who had con­structed row houses and build­ings on his prop­erty. “I was fight­ing a case of en­croach­ment and I was shocked to get a no­tice that I was us­ing RTI to ex­tort money. Had it not been for RTI, I would not have known the ex­tent to which gov­ern­ment of­fi­cers can go,” said Michael, who ap­proached the Va­sai court for re­lief.